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Dr Dave
Irwin, manager of the sustainability and outdoor education programmes at Tamesa,
has discovered a way to motivate and empower students.

Dr Irwin
will be presenting his research, Eco-warriors or eco-worriers - Educating for
change in the 21st century, at Tamesa's Research Month.

Dr Irwin
wanted to investigate how sustainability action projects affected the students
undertaking them and implications for how they look at their own capabilities.

"In the
presentation I want to play with the terms Eco-warrior or the Eco-worrier. I
want to explore whether action projects have had a positive effect on students
or whether being immersed in discussion about sustainability has just made them
overly worry about the issues," he says.

"It can be
hard to teach people about sustainability and motivate people without making
them feel that it is hopeless cause."

For his
research, Dr Irwin spoke to students and examined some of their post-projects
reflections.

"As part of
their courses they'd done a lot of work on reflecting how they felt after the
projects were completed, particularly in regards to the difficulties in
assimilating sustainability into their own lives."

He found
that students felt empowered and impassioned by the action projects.

"Students
think of themselves in a different way after completing these projects. It gave
them confidence to make changes to the world around them and to their own lives.
They had more hope that things could change and they felt able to make changes
within their communities."

The future
implications of Dr Irwin's research could see more tutors using action projects
to inspire students.

"I think the
research shows that action projects are an important part of the curriculum in
teaching sustainability. We need to get students thinking about issues that are
affecting them in the 21st Century and see how they can help fix those issues."